Investing in Solid State Drives: Cost Advantages

Investing in Solid State Drive: Cost Advantages

IntroductionSolid state drives (SSD) in desktop and laptop PCs have been available for several years, typically sold as premium additions to higher end machines. Their lower capacity and higher cost when compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDD) have limited their adoption in many businesses. However, following the traditional semiconductor curve, over the past year the market experienced significant SSD price reductions and capacity expansion. In fact, SSDs have recently become quite competitive, with commercial-class PC-targeted devices often breaking through the $1/GB level. Further, the capacity of mainstream SSDs has been increasing to the point where they are no longer relegated to previous limitations of containing only the OS and a few apps. With the “sweet spot” of SSDs now in the approximately 200GB-250GB range, they offer significant storage capacity for apps and files alike. While PC-targeted “sweet spot” HDDs are generally in the 500GB-1TB range, this is more capacity than most business-oriented users require, and thus the HDD capacity advantage may be a moot point for many users.

SSDs have always had a speed and power advantage over mechanical hard drives, but at a cost premium that was not always attractive. And while SSD reliability is significantly better than HDD, many felt that the additional cost for SSD was not justified (or simply not affordable). Our report, “SSDs in Notebooks: Cost Advantage or Cost Liability”, estimated a cost advantage of $214 over a 3 year lifecycle for each business class notebook and a Return on Investment (ROI) of 107% above and beyond the additional cost of outfitting the machine with an SSD. However, the above research only evaluated the cost advantage based on lower hardware failure rates and the subsequent savings offered, and not the specific productivity improvements in daily work scenarios.

IntroductionSolid state drives (SSD) in desktop and laptop PCs have been available for several years, typically sold as premium additions to higher end machines. Their lower capacity and higher cost when compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDD) have limited their adoption in many businesses. However, following the traditional semiconductor curve, over the past year the market experienced significant SSD price reductions and capacity expansion. In fact, SSDs have recently become quite competitive, with commercial-class PC-targeted devices often breaking through the $1/GB level. Further, the capacity of mainstream SSDs has been increasing to the point where they are no longer relegated to previous limitations of containing only the OS and a few apps. With the “sweet spot” of SSDs now in the approximately 200GB-250GB range, they offer significant storage capacity for apps and files alike. While PC-targeted “sweet spot” HDDs are generally in the 500GB-1TB range, this is more capacity than most business-oriented users require, and thus the HDD capacity advantage may be a moot point for many users.

SSDs have always had a speed and power advantage over mechanical hard drives, but at a cost premium that was not always attractive. And while SSD reliability is significantly better than HDD, many felt that the additional cost for SSD was not justified (or simply not affordable). Our report, “SSDs in Notebooks: Cost Advantage or Cost Liability”, estimated a cost advantage of $214 over a 3 year lifecycle for each business class notebook and a Return on Investment (ROI) of 107% above and beyond the additional cost of outfitting the machine with an SSD. However, the above research only evaluated the cost advantage based on lower hardware failure rates and the subsequent savings offered, and not the specific productivity improvements in daily work scenarios.